


don't want to rest in peace

by biochemprincess



Category: 12 Monkeys (TV)
Genre: Amnesia, Gen, Introspection, Post-Finale, Seasons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-08-01 17:25:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16288739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biochemprincess/pseuds/biochemprincess
Summary: What he didn't know though was his own name. He'd tried to remember it of course, figuring it out through the fog in his aching skull and in spite of the pain in his sore muscles. He pulled at the thread and all it did was untangle the tapestry that held together everything else.[...]In his dreams death visited him often. Dressed in black, a mask with a bird's beak, it always took his hand and showed him myriads of faces in their last moments of life. At night he saw the essence of life seep out of the bodies he had met during his waking hours, saw what they would end to become.





	don't want to rest in peace

**Author's Note:**

> the weirdest plot bunny i've ever written, especially because athan's voice is so specific and i'm not sure it works. but not risk no fun. please enjoy.

 

* * *

_{autumn}_

_how many centuries deep is your wound?_

* * *

 

 

A squirrel sat ten feet away from him, partly concealed by the grass, and nibbled on a nut. He simply stared at it. He did not move.

Not because he cared anything about that squirrel - he had very little feelings for them (he thought?) - but because everything in his body hurt. Like he'd been struck by lightning. Like he had been stuck in a never-ending ride of a teacup carousel in Disneyland.

It was fascinating, really. He knew what the sentence he'd just thought meant, literally. The word Disney conjured the image of a live-sized mouse in his head. The pastel colour of a singing teacup flashed before his mind.

What he didn't know though was his own name. He'd tried to remember it of course, figuring it out through the fog in his aching skull and in spite of the pain in his sore muscles. But it wouldn't come to him no matter what. He pulled at the thread and all it did was untangle the tapestry that held together everything else.

So he resorted to staring at the squirrel and his nut, while he lay on the cold wet ground under a canopy of trees. He'd tried looking up at the sky, but the sight of the red autumn leaves left him nauseous. Must be part of the concussion. Or he just truly hated autumn. Maybe a combination of both.

He tried to figure out how long he must been lying in the forest already. Hours, possibly longer. He tried to figure out how he'd gotten there, but it was just as much of a blank as everything else.

So for the time being not moving seemed like the best option. Despite the risk of contracting pneumonia.

The wind rustled through the leaves, blowing them off of the starving trees. The fabric of his black coat was soaked heavy with dew and rain. Only his hands were dry and somewhat warm, dressed in black leather gloves.

He wished he knew who and what had brought him here. He wished he knew more about himself other than the colour of the clothes on his body. It all felt surreal, as if he was part of a story that had been written for somebody else in mind. A last minute addition to an already fully functioning ecosystem.

Whatever circumstances had led him to this they were more than strange and unfortunate.

The pressure in his head subsided, but as the fleeting pain declined the emptiness of his memories became all the more prominent. Amnesia was often temporary, a sign of head injuries. It would match perfectly with his assumption of a concussion. But he couldn't be sure, because every detail concerning himself was entirely wiped away.

Which felt --- hilarious in the worst kind of ways. Because he knew there had been more - more of him and of his life; he was aware of a vault full of information, but there was no way to access it.

He stayed still on the ground for a little while longer, until he was certain he wouldn't topple over as soon he got up. He sat upright first, slowly. His movements were loud. The squirrel looked in his direction and assessed the situation. It took off in seconds.

Well enough, he didn't care about squirrels.

He didn't care about anything.

He was only an observer.

 

-

 

It didn't take him long to find a way out of the forest. Even with his slow, measured steps and his aching body. He'd thought himself to be in a part of the woods far away from any civilisation, but he'd been wrong.

He was in Brooklyn.

Cars drove past him as he tried to look at the street signs to for a direction to follow. He thought he had never been in this part of the city, but he couldn't be sure. He thought he knew basic facts about how to find his way around New York, but it could be imagination.

It was difficult to tell fact from fiction.

But he had to try to find out.

So he walked wherever his feet carried him, up and down different blocks and across colourful murals painted garage doors and brick walls. His clothes were still wet and clammy against his skin. He kept walking, even though his feet hurt. There was no other directive. So he took where his feet carried him. 

He crossed the Brooklyn Bridge in a stream of tourists, with the clouds moving overhead of him and casting the sky in a eerie light. In the flood of people he stood out like a sore thumb. The close proximity, the elbows in his side, the loud bicycle bells from every direction - the migraine returned in full force and his field of vision zeroed in. 

It would be a long year. 

 

-

 

Autumn winds had him moving around the city in a zigzag pattern for days, like a stray leaf blowing through the streets. He slept in narrow alleys or rundown buildings without an adequate security system. If he slept at all. He stole fitting clothes from washing lines. He sat in the Public Library, surrounded by tons and tons of marble and shelves filled with books and felt at home more than anywhere else. 

Sometimes he visited a book store and wandered through the aisle in search for inspiration, a means to fight his sheer endless boredom. Once, a table of special editions caught his eye and lured him closer. One book in particular looked especially interesting. 

His fingers grazed the bold relief of the heart on the cover. It sang to him, a siren's call from words of the past. _Gray's Anatomy_ by Henry Gray. He knew the name, knew the show inspired by it, knew the man behind it all. It was one of the first clear memories, almost tangible.

Gray had been brilliant, he recalled. Running out of time far too young due to a viral disease; the smallpox killed him eventually. He'd cared for his nephew until the end. His nephew had survived as far as he knew. 

It didn't make sense, the sentiment of knowing a man he had no chance of ever encountering. They were well into the 21st century and Gray had lived a long time ago, died a long time ago. Yet ---

He leaved through the pages. The illustrations caught his eye. An urge to just get a pencil and a piece of paper and draw something overcame him suddenly.

Who was he before destiny had made him a lonely traveler in a world he didn't understand? An artist, a doctor? He had no idea and no way of finding a starting point?

He didn't have enough money to pay for the book, as he had no money at all, except the few coins of change he sometimes found on the ground. The compulsion to take the book and run was present in his mind, but it was too unwieldy and he wouldn't get far. He couldn't risk being caught by the police, not when he had yet to find out anything about himself.

He left it behind with an uneasy feeling in his gut. 

 

-

 

In his dreams death visited him often. 

Dressed in black, a mask with a bird's beak, it always took his hand and showed him myriads of faces in their last moments of life. 

At night he saw the essence of life seep out of the bodies he had met during his waking hours, saw what they would end up to become. 

He tried to forgo sleep as often and for as long as possible, stretching the limits as far as his body would allow it. He wanted nothing to do with it.

That's when the hallucinations would begin. 

He'd stand in front of the Colosseum in Rome or look up at the Twin Towers rising towards the sky that now were fountains deep into the ground. He'd drink champagne with women in sparkly dresses, pearls draped around their necks. He'd be in places out of time, clashing with the very real environment he currently found himself in. 

He continued to explore the city in search of a clue.

In search of himself.

 

 

* * *

  _{winter}_

_the body will always make more room / for grief_

* * *

 

 

Winter came.

Winter happened.

Winter passed.

It was insufficient, the rudimentary recollection of weeks, months of his life. But he hardly remembered. The cold burned in his lungs, tiny needles pricked into his skin. The physical sensations he could recall, anything else not so much.

As if his brain wouldn't add anything else to the missing puzzle pieces, a frozen layer of ice over his mind keeping everything else out. 

 

-

 

Early in his quest of relearning the city around him he found a sleeping bag, torn and smelling of awful things he didn't want to think about, in the boxes a family moving out of their apartment had left at the boardwalk. He took other stuff too - a pink duffel bag with glitter fairies printed onto it, a copy of Spring Awakening, and an empty notebook.

He found abandoned warehouses, which gave shelter from the wind and the snow. They couldn't keep out the freezing cold, but at least he was dry and could light a fire, if he was careful enough.

(He didn't do it often, igniting a fire. He felt --- like slob whenever he did it. Technically he was one, but he still considered himself above it. Had a distaste for the canned food and all the other junk he pulled out of trash containers.)

He implemented a rotating system for various book stores in the city. He didn't want to attract too much attention by staying at one too often. Today he walked straight to the Barnes & Noble two blocks away from the One World Tower.

From a military point of view it was an excellent location. The store wasn't on the ground level, you had to take an escalator upstairs to enter it, which meant there were no surprises if he felt the need to be vigilant.

It still surprised him just how much comfort it gave him to have the upper hand in every kind of situation. He wanted the power and control of strutting into a room and owning it. And he should always be careful. 

There was another reason he preferred this very book store above others and it had absolutely nothing to do with strategic planing. It was nothing but a convenient excuse for bullshitting himself. 

He had no reason or excuse for his brain still not providing a single memory of his life on purpose. Random faces came up during everyday encounters but there were no names connected to them. (At night he still watched them die.) 

The reason for his coming to this area of the city had something to do with the exact opposite situation; a name without a face.

He had not reason or excuse for being a romantic fool. But he frequented this store so often for his proximity to the Trinity Church, simple as that. Because many days he visited the graveyard afterwards, specifically the grave of one woman, for no other reason than her name resonating within him on a level he could not comprehend in a rational manner.

It was foolish and it drove him mad.

He cared nothing for Alexander Hamilton, historically or musically in any way or form, but his wife ---

Eliza.

(The first time he'd found the grave with her name on it he'd stopped dead in this tracks, his body paralyzed into a standstill.

 _Eliza_.)

It struck a cord, a song in his bones. Just this one name had given him more than any of his daily mental exercises have ever done for him. Three syllables of a melody his lips have never forgotten to sing, five letters arranged in the only way it mattered apparently.

He knew this wasn't about Eliza Schuyler. Even with the occasional flashes of him in various impossible time periods - a sure sign of impending insanity - he was certain he had never met her. He must've known somebody with the same name.

Somebody dead, given his reaction to the simple grey grave stone on the ground inscribed with the important details of her life. Somebody he loved with a force equal to a natural disaster when now he didn't think he had the capability to do so anymore.

Once he'd stolen some flowers from a shop and placed a handful of jasmine and lavender on her tombstone to bestow honour. The yellow and lilac colour had stood out against the white snow. It had only left him more anxious and closer to the edge of despair than before.

(He'd admit another lie though - he did listen to one song of the godforsaken musical the whole city constantly hummed. And he looked down onto his bare hands empty of a ring and knew exactly what kind of love he'd somehow lost with loss of the faceless woman named Eliza.)

 

-

 

The Christmas lights hung in the streets and windows way past the holidays and New Year's Eve. They served as another reminder of his obvious loneliness. He didn't like to admit it. He didn't like to shine any light on his weaknesses. He had yet to find out if the total cut-off from any personal interaction counted as a weakness or strength. Probably the latter.

You couldn't lose what you didn't have.

 

 

* * *

_{spring}_

_home, love, family; there was once a time i must've had them too_

* * *

 

 

When the sun started to return to New York, he got a job as a janitor in a hospital. They required astonishingly little personal information from him. It was easy to fool them into believing he was an upright citizen.

He was absolutely not.

Instead he called himself Sebastian for a lack of a better alternative and picked a common last name to go with it. Acquiring the documents was a matter of finding the right people and pay them for the right kind of wrong life choices. Beforehand it implied stealing the right amount money. 

The hospital felt like the perfect kind of place to start, not just as good as any other. It radiated comfort and belonging which seemed odd considering that it was, well, a hospital. Didn't appear to be the case for other people. But he had already considered that he wasn't exactly on the normal part of the spectrum of humanity. 

The job itself was a job and it paid. He didn't enjoy it much but with most things in his life he had no extreme feelings in one direction or the other. He was a blank slate and it all didn't concern him much. It was better than being bored to death at least.

(Truth: He cared for nothing except Eliza Schuyler's grave. He always made time to visit it frequently. It was he only place he found a connection to his shadowy past.)

 

-

 

In his free time he filled the notebook he'd once found with images of his surroundings. He sat on various benches in Central Park and drew the skyline rising high from behind the trees. He wrote about his days in the pages between the drawings, so he wouldn't forget anything ever again.

He watched the families on their way through the park, the mothers pushing strollers and the fathers carrying children on their shoulders, and he thought about himself as a part of such a unit.

Nobody had ever recognized him. He had checked a number of websites about missing people and never found his face in any of them. Nobody had ever looked for him. Nobody missed him.

But shouldn't there be somebody?

Shouldn't there be people who loved him?

Shouldn't they be searching for him?

Was his mother ever thinking about him? Did his father spare a thought about him? Were there any siblings who wondered where their brother had ended up? 

But he missed it, the connection these families had. Without knowing anything about it he still wanted it. The same special place of belonging to a family that took over him whenever he watched the families around their picnic blankets, their laughter carrying through the whole park on sunny days. 

Had there ever been a time he'd been as happy? Or had he been alone all his life and his life now was just the continuation of an already pathetic life? Maybe his amnesia was gift, not a curse.

Maybe it was a means of protecting him from something far worse. 

 

-

 

His first paycheck afforded him enough money to rent a tiny apartment in a less desirable part of the city, but he didn't care much. Sure, he wished for more space and more lavish furniture than the food-stained couch than the previous tenant had left behind, it still was a step up from roaming abandoned warehouses. He didn't risk anybody stealing his scarce belongings here.

Or more accurately, he lowered the risk of losing his notebooks full of memories to theft or unforeseen weather conditions. It was all he had, it was all the proof of his existing he had. It was pitiful, that all of him could be condensed into a few pages, but he couldn't change it. And it mattered.

He couldn't start all over again.

 

* * *

_{summer}_

_don't you want to be alive before you die?_

* * *

 

 

The sun rose at exactly half past five. He didn't leave his bed. He lay on his right side and stared at the empty space next to him as if something would materialize out of thin air any second. Or rather someone.

He was so goddamn tired of it. The looking over his shoulder and waiting for the other shoe to drop and the nightmares of dying people and the empty space where somebody else should be and the empty life lacking purpose and his empty head.

He was sick to death of it.  

What had he _done_  to deserve any of this? He was alone. There was _nobody_. Granted, he didn't let anybody else into his life, no coworkers and no acquaintances at shady bars. But how was he supposed to open up when he had no indication that it wasn't all a huge mistake destined to be his downfall?

Where was the map to show him the way?

He let go of all that held him back. Maybe this had been his problem for all along. His thickheaded inability to see the bigger picture.

So he let it all wash over him. He stopped fighting tooth and nail for scraps of memory. His fist connected with the concrete walls of his scrappy apartment. Again and again, until his knuckles split open, until the metallic smell of blood filled his nose. 

With every punch the knots in his head loosened. The pain focused his thoughts. The very physical walls were a stand-in for the psychological ones in his head and his fists fought them both until it all broke down to ruins.

It hurt and it hurt and he relished in it.

Every punch brought back a memory of his past. 

The face of the man he called his father and the gun pointed at his head when he'd merely been a boy destined to do unspeakable atrocities by a group of faceless men.

His mother's kind eyes stained with tears, who told him about the cruel tricks of time and how it always took and took and took.

Eliza's smirk of superiority whenever she had the upper hand on him in any of their intellectual quarrels. Her cold body all the dozens and hundreds times he watched her die, unable to save her life again and again and again.

He remembered his name then, on the 26th day of June.

He remembered everything.

 

-

 

It took him quite a few days to catalogue the flood of memories crashing at the shores of his brain, sort them into something resembling a timeline of his own life. Most of it became clear in the context of other memories, though the most pressing of his questions remained his death and subsequent resurrection.

He remembered the gun fight, could even still feel the bullets tearing his flesh away if he just thought hard enough about it. He tried not to. (The pain in his knuckles was enough as it was.)

He knew Markridge existed and he knew Jennifer was the one in charge of the company. She was Primary, like him. If he remember she'd certainly do too. But did he want to find out? The unicorns she'd created were a strong point on the ' _Con_ ' side of his list. 

There were other things to consider.

His job gave him access to an internet connection. It would be simple enough to look up the house his parents had called home and figuring out if it existed in this timeline as well. And if it did, finding out who lived there.

Or he could just google her name.

Type 'Cassandra Railly' into the search bar and see if the results matched his expectation. He didn't even know if he had any expectations. He had gotten all his memories back and didn't know anything at all, was sure of even less than before then.

_See you soon._

He'd promised his mother to find her. And now he had the opportunity to do just as he'd said he would.

But there were different possibilities he had to add into the equation.

She could simply not exist in this time, though he thought it unlikely. She had existed before the invention of time travel.

There was the possibility she didn't have any memories of the other timeline she had lived, no memory of him. And was possible she didn't want anything to do with him, even if she remembered him. (It was the least possible version of events he admitted to himself; he knew little about Cassandra, but he knew her well enough to trust her to not abandon him _willingly_.)

But he wasn't sure if he could handle standing in front of her and not see a spark of recognition in her eyes. He had done it once when he'd visited her at her work place, before she had ever known she would become a mother, _his_ mother. And he knew he couldn't do it again, not like this. 

He wasn't a good man and he was an asshole more often than not, but he'd rather live with the little memory of another timeline than have the certainty of her unintentional lack of knowledge, because it had been erased by time. 

_It takes, and it runs. Like a thief._

The question was easy: Was he willing to jump into the water even if he risked drowning in it? 

He thought about what Eliza would think of him if she could see him now. Would she think him a monster, a coward, a creature outside of time?  _(There's only now. There's only today._ ) Maybe she wouldn't even recognize him. 

Days passed and he let them. They turned to weeks in front of his eyes, passing by in agonizing slowness. For the first time in his existence he really and truly was nothing but a passenger of time's linear stream starting from the Big Bang and reaching up to this very moment. There was no vest and no machine and no loop hole to release him from it.

Every sunrise followed a sunset followed a sunrise. 

 

-

 

The heat rose steady day to day, proportional to the godforsaken humidity. His patience wore thinner with every passing day. He tried to not think about Cassandra or Eliza or Cole, even. He smoked a cigarette and didn't think about Katarina. Think about a pink elephant. 

 _No matter what, save the one._  
  
He did think about his father despite his best intentions.

Had Katarina listened to him and found a way to save her grandson?

He had found out the truth about his parentage by accident and determination both, a coincidence and the desire to find out more about his genetic lineage. He'd met his grandmothers and grandfathers, maternal and paternal. None had known who he was, except one.

(Hannah had looked at him with pity, he remembered. And so had he in return, her arms as empty of her child as his mother's had been. As Katarina's had been for so long. His was a family of mothers without children and sons without fathers and daughters without mothers.)

He remembered it all and it drove him mad now. For months he'd begged for his memories to return, but he wanted to find solace in the unending desert of his amnesia again. Be careful what you wish for. 

Had she saved him too? Was he worthy of being _the one_ as well? 

It was all it took to bring down his resolve.

The next morning he woke up in the dead of night, arrived early at work and sat himself in front of one of the computers. His fingers didn't waver as he opened the browser and searched for his mother's name.

The first entry was hers already, a picture next to her name. He clicked the link and found an interview she'd given as a part of a presentation she'd held for the CDC. He had been there, in the other lifetime.

She looked exactly the same. 

Just as she had always done. 

He had rarely seen any resemblance to his mother before. His hair was too dark in comparison and his character too distorted, too splintered to have inherited anything from her. But in the picture he could see the same kind of loneliness that greeted him in the mirror every morning.

He looked up 10 Old Pines Road, Binghamton, NY, next. The search engine showed him the same white house he expected to see. He browsed through various real estate websites only to find out that it had already been sold a while ago.

It could only mean one thing. 

It had to. 

He knew how long it took to get there by car. It was a little more than a three hour drive if the the traffic was playing along. He could rent a car. He could get in and just drive north until he arrived at the House of Cedar and Pine, until he may or may not stand in front of a woman who had been his mother in another life. 

 

-

 

He didn't take off immediately. He went to work for the rest of the week, continued his days as ordinary as possible. The next Saturday he packed the duffel bag with the fairy and his notebooks filled with the life of the man without memories and rented a car. He'd started a different sketch book, separate from the others, with memories from the other timeline. It was easier to keep those two apart from each other.

It was mostly empty, except for a few drawings of Eliza. 

(He hadn't been brave enough to look her up on the internet. He was a coward through and through.)

The warmth of the sun greeted him as he got out of his air-conditioned rental. The heat was a lot more bearable out here than it was in the streets of Manhattan. Right in front of him the house stood tall. The paint looked new, a fresh white. Flowers were planted all around the house, trees built a natural border around the piece of land. 

It looked peaceful. A place built for a family, for a happy life. 

Radio music carried in the air through an open window. He wanted to climb back into the car and race back the way he'd come from. Just anything as long as he got to keep the facade of a life he'd built.

For all of his life somebody else had carved out the path he'd taken. Until he'd met Eliza. She'd been the one to show him a life untainted by pre-written destiny, the one who'd showed him _how to live_. All of his bravery had been borrowed from her. 

He heard as the front door opened with a loud creak. His back was turned to the house, his frame still partly concealed by the car. They wouldn't have many unannounced visitors here, given the remote location of the house. A strange car in their driveway was definitely a reason to take a look at it.

He let out a deep breath. Then he stepped in front of the car and walked towards the house. 

And stopped.

There she stood. They stood, he behind her with his hand on her arm.

She wore a simple t-shirt, her blonde hair fell over shoulder. Her hand clamped around her mouth. Even from the distance he could discern the tears gathering in her eyes, rolling down her checks.  

His knees almost gave out by the sheer relief, but he didn't want to let it show.

Time had given him this. Maybe it had still owed her another favour.

He wanted to shout a quip at them, yell a joke to lighten the mood.  _The report of my death was an exaggeration_. But he couldn't bring himself to even open his mouth to say a word. This wasn't a time for lighthearted entertainment. 

Cassandra leapt down the stairs of the house and crossed the rest of the way so fast he had to prepare for the impact of her storming at him. Her arms wrapped around him and this, _this,_ was home, not a mausoleum of marble. No visions of death haunted his mind just once. He was free, he was home. 

He could breathe again, at peace. 

His mother's voice was in his ear and she gave him back his name in that very instant, after it had been lost for a blink of an eye, for a whole life; for an _eternity_ and then some. 

_"Athan."_

**Author's Note:**

> title borrowed from the lyrics of 'dancing in the graveyard' by delta rae.
> 
> the quotes at the beginning of each season are not mine and belong to different authors/songs:  
> autumn: Adonis, from “Unintended Worship,” If Only the Sea Could Sleep (Green Integer, 2003)  
> winter: Kate Gaskin, from “Poem with a Possible Unidentified Flying Object,” published in Tin House  
> spring: Journey To The Past, Anastasia (1997)  
> summer: Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See
> 
> the line from anastasia is the reason i wrote this whole fic. it just struck me and well. i hope you liked it and i'd love to hear your thoughts on everything. thank you for reading.


End file.
